


Paperback Romance

by mjules



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-18
Updated: 2006-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 15:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/pseuds/mjules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is for <a href="http://musamea.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://musamea.livejournal.com/"><b>musamea</b></a>, specifically the request for Hank in a bookstore.  I might’ve gotten a little carried away, especially when I raided my own bookshelf.  Oops.  I hope it’s not too far off from what you wanted!  Sorry it’s as late as it is; I agreed to pinch-hit, and then real life slammed me out of the blue.  Thanks to <a href="http://xbedhead.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://xbedhead.livejournal.com/"><b>xbedhead</b></a> for a lightning-quick midnight beta.</p><p>Authors quoted include: Lord Byron, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Eldredge, J.R.R. Tolkien, D.L. Rhodes, Corrie Ten Boom, and Alexandre Dumas.  And of course I don’t own their material.</p><hr/><br/>
    </blockquote>





	Paperback Romance

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [](http://musamea.livejournal.com/profile)[**musamea**](http://musamea.livejournal.com/), specifically the request for Hank in a bookstore. I might’ve gotten a little carried away, especially when I raided my own bookshelf. Oops. I hope it’s not too far off from what you wanted! Sorry it’s as late as it is; I agreed to pinch-hit, and then real life slammed me out of the blue. Thanks to [](http://xbedhead.livejournal.com/profile)[**xbedhead**](http://xbedhead.livejournal.com/) for a lightning-quick midnight beta.
> 
> Authors quoted include: Lord Byron, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Eldredge, J.R.R. Tolkien, D.L. Rhodes, Corrie Ten Boom, and Alexandre Dumas. And of course I don’t own their material.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> 

  
There were certain things that seduced him in strange ways he wasn’t sure anyone would understand. The rhythm of phrases, a unique tangle of words and sentences so vibrant he could practically taste them rolling off his tongue. Alliteration and rhyme, antiquated syllables that wore their dust like medals of honor. Patterns of speech so outdated that even he avoided using them -- but oh, God, how they stirred in his soul.

The sweet odor of glue and the oddly brittle scent of supple paper were rich in his nostrils, and for once the animalistic implications of his beastly physicality delighted him. Few others would be able to pick out the differences between the myriad qualities of paper simply by their smell. Parchment managed to smell musty even when it was brand new; the cheap recycled pages of paperback novels gave off a bourgeouis scent; and the glossy, laminated pages of magazines and toddler’s books stank with chemicals and sealants.

The different textures of page and binding, of leather-covered volumes and dime-a-dozen paperbacks, of cloth-bound classics and paper-finished sleeves on best-selling hardcovers, invited his touch like the skin of a lover. He skimmed his clawed hands tenderly down the ridges of their spines, rifled playfully through their pages and listened to the quiet _slap-slap-slap_ as the chapters flashed by in a peek-a-boo rush.

It didn’t so much matter to him the subject of the book he was reading; what he wanted was a full experience of speech and scent, sensation and satisfaction. Obscure or over-hyped, innocent or indecent, it didn’t make much difference to him. Logan had blondes, brunettes, and redheads -- Hank had poets, essayists, and tellers of tall tales.

He savored their words like fine wine, like kisses, like the last meal of a condemned man. When everything in his head became too much for him, he escaped into the whispering voices of the writers.

Voices of longing romantics, overwrought with their own -- perhaps misguided -- sense of the eternal nature of their affections.

 _Remind me not, remind me not, Of those beloved, those vanish’d hours, When all my soul was given to thee; Hours that may never be forgot, Till time unnerves our vital powers, And thou and I shall cease to be._

Voices of humor and satire, laughing voices that yet brimmed with warning about the state of human nature, the lengths to which a man will go to hold on to all he finds comforting, familiar, or precious.

 _Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use. Then he was more explicit. The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary proof of the way in which the inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against loss of memory:_ This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk. _...At the beginning of the rod into the swamp they put up a sign that said_ Macondo _and another larger one on the main street that said_ God exists.

Voices that whispered to the deeper places, the secret desires, of the heart. The mundane wishes for a life in Eden, a life before the angel’s flaming sword plunged into the writhing boundary between the fertile garden we left behind and the desert wilderness into which we wandered in exile far back in the beginning of time -- an exile we are still victims of in steel and glass structures, stone and wood.

 _Glancing through its pages, you get a sense of rest. Life is good. ‘You see,’ the images whisper, ‘it can be done. Life is within your grasp.’ And so the quest continues. But of course. Our address used to be Paradise, remember?_

Fanciful voices, teasing and playing, weaving stories of accidental heroes and the way in which destiny often stumbles upon us.

 _“Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning! But please come to tea -- any time you like. Why not tomorrow? Come tomorrow. Good-bye!”_

The quiet voices of mystics who live in a wonderland all their own, who speak more for the sound of their words than any real sense of purpose, but whose gossamer visions exploded in his head like the best feather-down dreams he ever fought to hold on to when morning peeked through his window.

 _There is a pool of infinite blackness -- the edges crusted with the smallest drops of sound. You draw from the pool those saturated syllables of mercy -- the unspoken words that sting of madness. Together we reach into the maddening waters to pull back the film and see paradise._

Voices of history, survivors of ghastly times who managed to find poetry in the bleakness of their past, a stark, staring testimony to the beauty of human grace and grit and ability to go on past the very last line of sanity.

 _There were nine of us sharing our particular square, designed for four, and some grumbling as the others discovered they would have to make room for Betsie and me. Eight acrid and overflowing toilets served the entire room; to reach them we had to crawl not only over our own bedmates but over those on other platforms between us and the closest aisle, always at teh risk of adding too much weight to the already sagging slats and crashing down on the people beneath. It happened several times, that first night. From somewhere in the room would come a splintering sound, a shriek, smothered cries._

Voices that echoed things he felt sometimes in his own heart -- the stories of men who fought past wrongs and grievances to find their own justice, their own satisfaction, in spite of the evil that assaulted them when they were still innocent. Men who gave up their innocence for the right to repay the havoc wreaked upon them.

 _“I need but mention one of my many names to strike terror into your heart. But you guess this name, or rather you remember it, do you not? For, in spite of all my grief and tortures, I show you to-day a face made young by the joy of vengeance, a face that you must often have seen in your dreams since your marriage with -- Mercedes.”_

And when the days grew too long and the fight seemed hopeless, he had only to wander down the aisles of these, his friends, his lovers, and fumble one open to find the fond, familiar, welcome escape within their eager pages.

With a sigh, he returned the book to its place on the shelf, his mind echoing with remnants of words and phrases, scenes that colored his atmosphere and balanced him out once more. Gone for the moment were the the bickering quarrels of teammates and enemies, the seemingly unsolveable problems of public relations and his own private wars with the microscope and the mirror.

Peace settled over him and he lingered for a moment in the narrow aisle, closing his eyes and breathing deeply of the scent of his treasures before he squared his shoulders and returned to the world that awaited him outside.

* * *

 **The End**


End file.
